You Only Live Twice

The dreamed screams had merged into real ones when, four hours later, Bond awoke. There was silence in the hut. Bond got cautiously to his knees and put his eye to a wide crack in the rickety planking. A screaming man, from his ragged blue cotton uniform a Japanese peasant, was running across his line of vision along the edge of the lake. Four guards were after him, laughing and calling as if it were a game of hide-and-seek. They were carrying long staves, and now one of them paused and hurled his stave accurately after the man so that it caught in his legs and brought him crashing to the ground. He scrambled to his knees and held supplicating hands out toward his pursuers. Still laughing, they gathered round him, stocky men in high rubber boots, their faces made terrifying by black maskos over their mouths, black-leather nosepieces and the same ugly black-leather soup-plate hats as the agent on the train had worn. They poked at the man with the ends of their staves, at the same time shouting harshly at him in voices that jeered. Then, as if at an order, they bent down and, each man seizing a leg or an arm, picked him off the ground, swung him once or twice and tossed him out into the lake. The ghastly ripple surged forward and the man, now screaming again, beat at his face with his hands and floundered as if trying to make for the shore, but the screams rapidly became weaker and finally ceased as the head went down and the red stain spread wider and wider.

Doubled up with laughter, the guards on the bank watched the show. Now, satisfied that the fun was over, they turned away and walked toward the hut, and Bond could see the tears of their pleasure glistening on their cheeks.

He got back under cover and heard their boisterous voices and laughter only yards away as they came into the hut and pulled out their rakes and barrows and dispersed to their jobs, and for some time Bond could hear them calling to one another across the park. Then, from the direction of the castle, came the deep tolling of a bell, and the men fell silent. Bond glanced at the cheap Japanese wrist watch Tiger had provided. It was nine o'clock. Was this the beginning of the official working day? Probably. The Japanese usually get to their work half an hour early and leave half an hour late in order to gain face with their employer and show keenness and gratitude for their jobs. Later, Bond guessed, there would be an hour's luncheon break. Work would probably cease at six. So it would only be from six-thirty on that he would have the grounds to himself. Meanwhile, he must listen and watch and find out more about the guards' routines, of which he had presumably witnessed the first--the smelling out and final dispatch of suicides who had changed their minds or turned fainthearted during the night. Bond softly unzipped his container and took a bite at one of his three slabs of pemmican and a short draught from his water bottle. God, for a cigarette!

An hour later, Bond heard a brief shuffling of feet on the gravel path on the other side of the lake. He looked through the slit. The four guards had lined up and were standing rigidly at attention. Bond's heart beat a little faster. This would be for some form of inspection. Might Blofeld be doing his rounds, getting his reports of the night's bag?

Bond strained his eyes to the right, toward the castle, but his view was obstructed by an expanse of white oleanders, that innocent shrub with its attractive clusters of blossoms used as a deadly fish poison in many parts of the tropics. Dear, pretty bush! Bond thought. I must remember to keep clear of you tonight.

And then, following the path on the other side of the lake, two strolling figures came into his line of vision and Bond clenched his fists with the thrill of seeing his prey.

Blofeld, in his gleaming chain armor and grotesquely spiked and winged helmet of steel, its visor closed, was something out of Wagner, or, because of the Oriental style of his armor, a Japanese kabuki play. His armored right hand rested easily on a long naked samurai sword while his left was hooked into the arm of his companion, a stumpy woman with the body and stride of a wardress. Her face was totally obscured by a hideous beekeeper's hat of dark-green straw with a heavy pendent black veil reaching down over her shoulders. But there could be no doubt! Bond had seen that dumpy silhouette, now clothed in a plastic rainproof above tall rubber boots, too often in his dreams. That was she! That was Irma Bunt!

Bond held his breath. If they came round the lake to his side, one tremendous shove and the armored man would be floundering in the water! But could the piranhas get at him through chinks in the armor? Unlikely! And how would he, Bond, get away? No, that wouldn't be the answer.

The two figures had almost reached the line of four men, and at this moment the guards dropped to their knees in unison and bowed their foreheads down to the ground. Then they quickly jumped up and stood again at attention.

Blofeld raised his visor and addressed one of the men, who answered with deference. Bond noticed for the first time that this particular guard wore a belt round his waist with a holstered automatic. Bond couldn't hear the language they were speaking. It was impossible that Blofeld had learned Japanese. English or German? Probably the latter as a result of some wartime liaison job. The man laughed and pointed toward the lake, where a collapsed balloon of blue clothing was jigging softly with the activities of the horde of feasting piranhas within it. Blofeld nodded his approval and the men again went down on their knees. Blofeld raised a hand in brief acknowledgment, lowered his visor and the couple moved regally on.

Bond watched carefully to see if the file of guards, when they got to their feet, registered any private expressions of scorn or hilarity once the master's back was turned. But there was no hint of disrespect. The men broke rank and hurried off about their tasks with disciplined seriousness.

And now the two strolling figures were coming back into Bond's line of vision, but this time from the left. They had rounded the end of the lake and were on their way back, perhaps to visit other groups of guards and get their reports. Tiger had said there were at least 20 guards and that the property covered 500 acres. Five working parties of four guards each? Blofeld's visor was up and he was talking to the woman. They were now only 20 yards away. They stopped at the edge of the lake and contemplated, with relaxed curiosity, the still turbulent mass of fish round the floating doll of blue cloth. They were talking German. Bond strained his ears.

Blofeld said, "The piranhas and the volcanic mud are useful housekeepers. They keep the place tidy."

"The sea and the sharks are also useful."

"But often the sharks do not complete the job. That spy we put through the Question Room. He was almost intact when his body was found down the coast. The lake would have been a better place for him. We don't want that policeman from Fukuoka coming here too often. He may have means of learning from the peasants how many people are crossing the wall. That will be many more, nearly double the number the ambulance comes for. If our figures go on increasing at this rate, there is going to be trouble. I see from the cuttings Kono translates for me that there are already mutterings in the papers about a public inquiry."

"And what shall we do then, lieber Ernst?"

"We shall obtain massive compensation and move on. The same pattern can be repeated in other countries. Everywhere there are people who want to kill themselves. We may have to vary the attractions of the opportunities we offer them. Other people have not the profound love of horror and violence of the Japanese. A really beautiful waterfall. A handy bridge. A vertiginous drop. These (continued on page 108)You Only Live Twice(continued from page 102) might be alternatives. Brazil, or somewhere else in South America, might provide such a site."

"But the figures would be much smaller."

"It is the concept that matters, liebe Irma. It is very difficult to invent something that is entirely new in the history of the world. I have done that. If my bridge, my waterfall, yields a crop of only perhaps ten people a year, it is simply a matter of statistics. The basic idea will be kept alive."

"That is so. You are indeed a genius, lieber Ernst. You have already established this place as a shrine to death forevermore. People read about such fantasies in the works of Poe, Lautréamont, De Sade, but no one has ever created such a fantasy in real life. It is as if one of the great fairy tales has come to life. A sort of Disneyland of Death. But of course," she hastened to add, "on an altogether grander, more poetic scale."

"In due course I shall write the whole story down. Then perhaps the world will acknowledge the type of man who has been living among them. A man not only unhonored and unsung, but a man"--Blofeld's voice rose almost to a scream--"whom they hunt down and wish to shoot like a mad dog. A man who has to use all his wiles just to stay alive! Why, if I had not covered my tracks so well, there would be spies on their way even now to kill us both or to hand us over for official murder under their stupid laws! Ah well, liebe Irma," the voice was more rational, quieter, "we live in a world of fools in which true greatness is a sin. Come! It is time to review the other detachments."

They turned away and were about to continue along the lake when Blofeld suddenly stopped and pointed like a dog directly at Bond. "That hut among the bushes. The door is open! I have told the men a thousand times to keep such places locked. It is a perfect refuge for a spy or a fugitive. I will make sure."

Bond shivered. He huddled down, dragging sacks from the top of his barrier to give extra protection. The clanking steps approached, entered the hut. Bond could feel the man, only yards away, could feel his questing eyes and nostrils. There came a clang of metal and the wall of sacks shook at great thrusts from Blofeld's sword. Then the sword slashed down again and again and Bond winced and bit his lip as a hammer blow crashed across the center of his back. But then Blofeld seemed to be satisfied and the iron steps clanged away. Bond let out his breath in a quiet hiss. He heard Blofeld's voice say, "There is nothing, but remind me to reprimand Kono on our rounds tomorrow. The place must be cleared out and a proper lock fitted." Then the sound of the steps vanished in the direction of the oleander clump, and Bond gave a groan and felt his back. But, though many of the sacks above him had been sliced through, his protection had been just deep enough and the skin across his spine wasn't broken.

Bond got to his knees and rearranged the hide-out, massaging his aching back as he did so. Then he spat the dust from the sacking out of his mouth, took a swallow from the water bottle, assured himself through his slit that there was no movement outside and lay down and let his mind wander back over every word that Blofeld had uttered.

Of course the man was mad. A year earlier, the usual quiet tones that Bond remembered so well would never have cracked into that lunatic, Hitler scream. And the coolness, the supreme confidence that had always lain behind his planning? Much of that seemed to have seeped away, perhaps, Bond hoped, partly because of the two great failures he, Bond, had done much to bring about in two of Blofeld's most grandiose conspiracies. But one thing was clear--the hide-out was blown. Tonight would have to be the night. Ah, well! Once again Bond ran over the hazy outline of his plan. If he could gain access to the castle, he felt pretty confident of finding a means to kill Blofeld. But he was also fairly certain that he, himself, would die in the process. Dulce et decorum est... and all that jazz! But then he thought of Kissy, and he wasn't so sure about not fearing for himself. She had brought a sweetness back into his life that he thought had gone forever.

Bond dropped off into an uneasy, watchful sleep that was once again peopled by things and creatures out of nightmareland.

• • •

At six o'clock in the evening, the deep bell tolled briefly from the castle and dusk came like the slow drawing of a violet blind over the day. Crickets began to zing in a loud chorus and Gekkos chuckled in the shrubbery. The pink dragonflies disappeared and large horned toads appeared in quantities from their mudholes on the edge of the lake and, so far as Bond could see through his spy hole, seemed to be catching gnats attracted by the shining pools of their eyes. Then the four guards reappeared, and there came the fragrant smell of a bonfire they had presumably lit to consume the refuse they had collected during the day. They went to the edge of the lake and raked in the tattered scraps of blue clothing and, amidst delighted laughter, emptied long bones out of the fragments into the water. One of them ran off with the rags, presumably to add them to the bonfire, and Bond got under cover as the others pushed their wheelbarrows up the slope and stowed them away in the hut. They stood chattering happily in the dusk until the fourth arrived and then, without noticing the slashed and disarrayed sacks in the shadows, they filed off in the direction of the castle.

After an interval, Bond got up and stretched and shook the dust out of his hair and clothes. His back still ached, but his overwhelming sensation was the desperate urge for a cigarette. All right. It might be his last. He sat down and drank a little water and munched a large wedge of the highly flavored pemmican, then took another swig at the water bottle. He took out his single packet of Shinsei and lit up, holding the cigarette between cupped hands and quickly blowing out the match. He dragged the smoke deep down into his lungs. It was bliss! Another drag and the prospect of the night seemed less daunting. It was surely going to be all right! He thought briefly of Kissy who would now be eating her bean curd and fish and preparing the night's swim in her mind. A few hours more and she would be near him. But what would have happened in those few hours? Bond smoked the cigarette until it burned his fingers, then crushed out the stub and pushed the dead fragments down through a crack in the floor. It was seven-thirty and already some of the insect noises of sundown had ceased. Bond went meticulously about his preparations.

At nine o'clock he left the hide-out. Again the moon blazed down and there was total silence except for the distant burping and bubbling of the fumaroles and the occasional sinister chuckle of a Gekko from the shrubbery. He took the same route as the night before, came through the same belt of trees and stood looking up at the great bat-winged donjon that towered up to the sky. He noticed for the first time that the warning balloon with its advertisement of danger was tethered to a pole on the corner of the balustrade surrounding what appeared to be the main floor--the third, or center, one of the five. Here, from several windows, yellow light shone faintly, and Bond guessed that this would be his target area. He let out a deep sigh and strode quietly off across the gravel and came without incident to the tiny entrance under the wooden bridge.

The black ninja suit was as full of concealed pockets as a conjuror's tail coat. Bond took out a pencil flashlight and a small steel file and set to work on a link of the chain. Occasionally he paused to spit into the deepening groove to lessen the rasp of metal on metal, but then there came the final crack of parting steel and, using the file as a lever, he bent the link open and quietly removed the padlock and chain from their stanchions. He pressed lightly and the door gave inward. He took out his flashlight and pushed farther, probing the dark (continued on page 173)You Only Live Twice(continued from page 108) ness ahead with his thin beam. It was as well he did so. On the stone floor where his first step past the open door would have taken him, lay a yawning mantrap, its rusty iron jaws, perhaps a yard across, waiting for him to step on the thin covering of straw that partially concealed it. Bond winced as, in his imagination, he heard the iron clang as the saw teeth bit into his leg below the knee. There would be other such booby traps--he must keep every sense on the alert!

Bond closed the door softly behind him, stepped round the trap and swept the beam of his torch ahead and around him. Nothing but velvety blackness. He was in some vast underground cellar where no doubt the food supplies for a small army had once been stored. A shadow swept across the thin beam of light and another and another, and there was a shrill squeaking from all around him. Bond didn't mind bats or believe the Victorian myth that they got caught in your hair. Their radar was too good. He crept slowly forward, watching only the rough stone flags ahead of him. He passed one or two bulky arched pillars, and now the great cellar seemed to narrow, because he could just see walls to right and left of him, and above him an arched, cobwebby ceiling. Yes, here were the stone steps leading upward! He climbed them softly and counted 20 of them before he came to the entrance, a wide double door with no lock on his side. He pushed gently and could feel and hear the resistance of a rickety-sounding lock. He took out a heavy jimmy and probed. Its sharp jaws notched round some sort of a crossbolt, and Bond levered hard sideways until there came the tearing sound of old metal and the tinkle of nails or screws on stone. He pushed softly on the crack and, with a hideously loud report, the rest of the lock came away and half the door swung open with a screech of old hinges. Beyond was more darkness. Bond stepped through and listened, his torch doused. But he was still deep in the bowels of the castle and there was no sound. He switched on again. More stone stairs leading up to a modern door of polished timber. He went up them and carefully turned the metal door handle. No lock this time! He softly pushed the door open and found himself in a long stone corridor that sloped on upward. At the end was yet another modern door, and beneath it showed a thin strip of light!

Bond walked noiselessly up the incline and then held his breath and put his ear to the keyhole. Dead silence! He grasped the handle and inched the door open and then, satisfied, went through and closed the door behind him, leaving it on the latch. He was in the main hall of the castle. The big entrance door was on his left, and a well-used strip of red carpet stretched away from it and across the 50 feet of hall into the shadows that were not reached by the single large oil lamp over the entrance. The hall was not embellished in any way, save for the strip of carpet, and its ceiling was a maze of longitudinal and crossbeams interspersed with latticed bamboo over the same rough plasterwork as covered the walls. There was still the same castle smell of cold stone.

Bond kept away from the carpet and hugged the shadows of the walls. He guessed that he was now on the main floor and that somewhere straight ahead was his quarry. He was well inside the citadel. So far so good!

The next door, obviously the entrance to one of the public rooms, had a simple latch to it. Bond bent and put his eye to the keyhole. Another dimly lit interior. No sound! He eased up the latch, inched the door ajar, and then open, and went through. It was a second vast chamber, but this time one of baronial splendor--the main reception room, Bond guessed, where Blofeld would receive visitors. Between tall red curtains, edged with gold, fine set pieces of armor and weapons hung on the white plaster walls, and there was much heavy antique furniture arranged in conventional groupings on a vast central carpet of royal blue. The rest of the floor was of highly polished boards, which reflected back the lights from two great oil lanterns that hung from the high, timbered ceiling, similar to that of the entrance hall, but here with the main beams decorated in a zigzag motif of dark red. Bond, looking for places of concealment, chose the widely spaced curtains and, slipping softly from one refuge to the next, reached the small door at the end of the chamber that would, he guessed, lead to the private apartments.

He bent down to listen, but immediately leaped for cover behind the nearest curtains. Steps were approaching! Bond undid the thin chain from around his waist, wrapped it round his left fist and took the Jimmy in his right hand and waited, his eyes glued to a chink in the dusty-smelling material.

The small door opened halfway to show the back of one of the guards. He wore a black belt with a holster. Would this be Kono, the man who translated for Blofeld? He had probably had some job with the Germans during the war--in the Kempeitai, perhaps. What was he doing? He appeared to be fiddling with some piece of apparatus behind the door. A light switch? No, there was no electric light. Apparently satisfied, the man backed out, bowed deeply to the interior and closed the door. He wore no masko and Bond caught a brief glimpse of a surly, slit-eyed brownish face as he passed Bond's place of concealment and walked on across the reception chamber. Bond heard the click of the far door and then there was silence. He waited a good five minutes before gently shifting the curtain so that he could see down the room. He was alone.

And now for the last lap!

Bond kept his weapons in his hands and crept back to the door. This time no sound came from behind it. But the guard had bowed. Oh well! Probably out of respect for the aura of the master. Bond quietly but firmly thrust the door open and leaped through, ready for the attacking sprint.

A totally empty, totally featureless length of passageway yawned at his dramatics. It stretched perhaps 20 feet in front of him. It was dimly lit by a central oil lamp and its floor was of the usual highly polished boards. A "nightingale floor"? No. The guard's footsteps had uttered no warning creaks. But from behind the facing door at the end came the sound of music. It was Wagner, the Ride of the Valkyries, being played at medium pitch. Thank you, Blofeld! thought Bond. Most helpful cover! And he crept softly forward down the center of the passage.

When it came, there was absolutely no warning. One step across the exact half-way point of the flooring and, like a see-saw, the whole 20 feet of boards swiveled noiselessly on some central axis and Bond, arms and legs flailing and hands scrabbling desperately for a grip, found himself hurtling down into a black void. The guard! The fiddling about behind the door! He had been adjusting the lever that set the trap, the traditional oubliette of ancient castles! And Bond had forgotten! As his body plunged off the end of the inclined platform into space, an alarm bell, triggered by the mechanism of the trap, brayed hysterically. Bond had a fractional impression of the platform, relieved of his weight, swinging back into position above him, then he crashed shatteringly into unconsciousness.

Bond swam reluctantly up through the dark tunnel toward the blinding pinpoint of light. Why wouldn't someone stop hitting him? What had he done to deserve it? He had got two awabis. He could feel them in his hands, sharp-edged and rough. That was as much as Kissy could expect of him. "Kissy," he mumbled, "stop it! Stop it, Kissy!"

The pinpoint of light expanded, became an expanse of straw-covered floor on which he was crouching while the open hand crashed sideways into his face. Piff! Paff! With each slap the splitting pain in his head exploded into a thousand separate pain fragments. Bond saw the edge of the boat above him and desperately raised himself to grasp at it. He held up the awabis to show that he had done his duty. He opened his hands to drop them into the tub. Consciousness flooded back and he saw the two handfuls of straw dribble to the ground. But the blows had stopped. And now he could see, indistinctly, through a mist of pain. That brown face! Those slit eyes! Kono, the guard. And someone else was holding a torch for him. Then it all came back. No awabis! No Kissy! Something dreadful had happened! Everything had gone wrong! Shimatta! I have made a mistake! Tiger! The clue clicked and total realization swept through Bond's mind. Careful, now. You're deaf and dumb. You're a Japanese miner from Fukuoka. Get the record straight. To hell with the pain in your head. Nothing's broken. Play it cool. Bond put his hands down to his sides. He realized for the first time that he was naked save for the brief V of the black-cotton ninja underpants. He bowed deeply and straightened himself. Kono, his hand at his open holster, fired furious Japanese at him. Bond licked at the blood that was trickling down his face and looked blank, stupid. Kono took out his small automatic, gestured. Bond bowed again, got to his feet and, with a brief glance round the straw-strewn oubliette into which he had fallen, followed the unseen guard with the torch out of the cell.

There were stairs and a corridor and a door. Kono stepped forward and knocked.

And then Bond was standing in the middle of a small, pleasant, library-type room and the second guard was laying out on the floor Bond's ninja suit and the appallingly incriminating contents of his pockets. Blofeld, dressed in a magnificent black silk kimono across which a golden dragon sprawled, stood leaning against the mantelpiece beneath which a Japanese brazier smoldered. It was he all right. The bland, high forehead, the pursed purple wound of a mouth, now shadowed by a heavy gray-black mustache that drooped at the corners, on its way, perhaps, to achieving mandarin proportions, the mane of white hair he had grown for the part of Monsieur le Comte de Bleuville, the black bullet holes of the eyes. And beside him, completing the picture of a homely couple at ease after dinner, sat Irma Bunt, in the full regalia of a high-class Japanese lady, the petit point of a single chrysanthemum lying in her lap waiting for those pudgy hands to take it up when the cause of this unseemly disturbance had been ascertained. The puffy, square face, the tight bun of mousy hair, the thin wardress mouth, the light-brown, almost yellow eyes! By God, thought Bond dully, here they are! Within easy reach! They would both be dead by now but for his single criminal error. Might there still be some way of turning the tables? If only the pain in his head would stop throbbing!

Blofeld's tall sword stood against the wall. He picked it up and strode out into the room. He stood over with the pile of Bond's possessions and picked them over with the tip of the sword. He hooked up the black suit. He said in German, "And what is this, Kono?"

The head guard replied in the same language. His voice was uneasy and his eye slits swiveled with a certain respect toward Bond and away again. "It is a ninja suit, Herr Doktor. These are people who practice the secret arts of ninjutsu. Their secrets are very ancient and I know little of them. They are the art of moving by stealth, of being invisible, of killing without weapons. These people used to be much feared in Japan. I was not aware that they still existed. This man has undoubtedly been sent to assassinate you, my lord. But for the magic of the passage, he might well have succeeded."

"And who is he?" Blofeld looked keenly at Bond. "He is tall for a Japanese."

"The men from the mines are often tall men, my lord. He carries a paper saying that he is deaf and dumb. And other papers, which appear to be in order, stating that he is a miner from Fukuoka. I do not believe this. His hands have some broken nails, but they are not the hands of a miner."

"I do not believe it either. But we shall soon find out." Blofeld turned to the woman. "What do you think, my dear? You have a good nose for such problems--the instincts of a woman."

Irma Bunt rose and came and stood beside him. She looked piercingly at Bond and then walked slowly round him, keeping her distance. When she came to the left profile she said softly, with awe, "Der liebe Gott!" She went back to Blofeld. She said in a hoarse whisper, still staring, almost with horror, at Bond, "It cannot be! But it is! The scar down the right cheek! The profile! And the eyebrows have been shaved to give that upward tilt!" She turned to Blofeld. She said decisively, "This is the English agent. This is the man Bond, James Bond, the man whose wife you killed. The man who went under the name of Sir Hilary Bray." She added fiercely, "I swear it! You have got to believe me, lieber Ernst!"

Blofeld's eyes had narrowed. "I see a certain resemblance. But how has he got here? How has he found me? Who sent him?"

"The Japanese Geheimdienst. They will certainly have relations with the British Secret Service."

"I cannot believe it! If that was so, they would have come with warrants to arrest me. There are too many unknown factors in this business. We must proceed with great circumspection and extract the whole truth from this man. We must at once find out if he is deaf and dumb. That is the first step. The Question Room should settle that. But first of all he must be softened up." He turned to Kono. "Tell Kazama to get to work."

• • •

There were now ten guards in the room. They stood lined up against the wall behind Kono. They were all armed with their long staves. Kono fired an order at one of them. The man left his stave in an angle of the wall and came forward. He was a great, boxlike man with a totally bald, shining head like a ripe fruit and hands like hams. He took up his position in front of Bond, his legs straddled for balance and his lips drawn back in a snarling smile of broken black teeth. Then he swung his right hand sideways at Bond's head and slapped him with tremendous force exactly on the bruise of Bond's fall. Bond's head exploded with fire. Then the left hand came at him and Bond rocked sideways. Through a mist of blood he could see Blofeld and his woman. Blofeld was merely interested, as a scientist, but the woman's lips were parted and wet.

Bond took ten blows and knew that he must act while he still had the purpose and the strength. The straddled legs offered the perfect target. So long as the man had not practiced the sumo trick! Through a haze, Bond took aim and, as another giant blow was on its way, kicked upward with every ounce of force left to him. His foot slammed home. The man gave an animal scream and crashed to the ground, clasping himself and rolling from side to side in agony. The guards made a concerted rush forward, their staves lifted, and Kono had his gun out. Bond leaped for the protection of a tall chair, picked it up and hurled it at the snarling pack of guards. One of the legs caught a man in the teeth and there was the sound of splintering bone. The man went down clutching his face.

"Halt!" It was the Hitlerian scream Bond had heard before. The men stood stock still and lowered their staves. "Kono. Remove those men." Blofeld pointed down at the two casualties. "And punish Kazama for his incompetence. Get new teeth for the other one. And enough of this. The man will not speak with ordinary methods. If he can hear, he will not withstand the pressure of the Question Room. Take him there. The rest of the guards can wait in the audience chamber. Also! Marsch!"

Kono fired off orders to which the guards reacted at the double. Then Kono gestured to Bond with his gun, opened a small doorway beside the bookcase and pointed down a narrow stone passage. Now what? Bond licked the blood from the corners of his mouth. He was near the end of his tether. Pressure? He couldn't stand much more of it. And what was this Question Room? He mentally shrugged. There might still be a chance to get at Blofeld's throat. If only he could take that one with him! He went ahead down the passage, was deaf to the order from Kono to open the rough door at the end, had it opened for him by the guard while the pistol pressed into his spine, and walked forward into a bizarre room of roughly hewn stone that was very hot and stank disgustingly of sulphur.

Blofeld and the woman entered, the door was closed and they took their places in two wooden armchairs beneath an oil lamp and a large kitchen clock whose only unusual feature was that, at each quarter, the figures were underlined in red. The hands stood at just after 11 and now, with a loud iron tick, the minute hand dropped one span. Kono gestured for Bond to advance the 12 paces to the far end of the room where there was a raised stone pedestal seat with arms. It dripped with drying gray mud and there was the same volcanic filth on the floor all round it. Above the stone seat, in the ceiling, there was a wide circular opening through which Bond could see a patch of dark sky and stars. Kono's rubber boots squelched after him and Bond was gestured to sit down on the stone throne. In the center of the seat there was a large round ho'e. Bond did as he was told, his skin flinching at the hot sticky surface of the mud. He rested his forearms wearily on the stone arms of the throne and waited, his belly crawling with the knowledge of what this was all about.

Blofeld spoke from the other end of the room. He spoke in English. He said, in a loud voice that boomed round the naked walls, "Commander Bond, or number 007 in the British Secret Service if you prefer it, this is the Question Room, a device of my invention that has the almost inevitable effect of making silent people talk. As you know, this property is highly volcanic. You are now sitting directly above a geyser that throws mud, at a heat of around one thousand degrees centigrade, a distance of approximately one hundred feet into the air. Your body is now at an elevation of approximately fifty feet directly above its source. I had the whimsical notion to canalize this geyser up a stone funnel above which you now sit. This is what is known as a periodic geyser. This particular example is regulated to erupt volcanically at exactly the fifteenth minute in every hour." Blofeld looked behind him and turned back. "You will therefore observe that you have exactly eleven minutes before the next eruption. If you cannot hear me, or the translation that will follow, if you are a deaf-and-dumb Japanese as you maintain, you will not move from that chair and, at the fifteenth minute past eleven, you will suffer a most dreadful death by the incineration of your lower body. If, on the other hand, you leave the seat before the death moment, you will have demonstrated that you can hear and understand and you will then be put to further tortures which will inevitably make you answer my questions. These questions will seek to confirm your identity, how you come to be here, who sent you and with what purpose, and how many people are involved in the conspiracy. You understand? You would not prefer to give up this play-acting? Very well. On the off chance that your papers are perhaps partially correct, my chief guard will now briefly explain the purpose of this room in the Japanese language." He turned to the guard. "Kono, sag' ihm auf japanisch den Zweck dieses Zimmers."

Kono had taken up his position by the door. He now harangued Bond in sharp Japanese sentences. Bond paid no attention. He concentrated on regaining his strength. He sat relaxed and gazed nonchalantly round the room. He had remembered the final "hell" at Beppu and he was looking for something. Ah yes! There it was! A small wooden box in the corner to the right of his throne. There was no keyhole to it. Inside that box would undoubtedly be the regulating valve for the geyser. Could that bit of knowledge be put to some use? Bond tucked it away and racked his tired brain for some kind of a plan. If only the agonizing pulse in his head would stop. He rested his elbows on his knees and gently lowered his bruised face into his hands. At least that guard would now be in even worse agony than he!

Kono stopped talking. The clock uttered a deep iron tick.

It ticked nine times more. Bond looked up at the black-and-white clock-work face. It said 11:14. A deep, angry grumble sounded from deep down beneath him. It was followed by a hard buffet of very hot breath. Bond got to his feet and walked slowly away from the stinking stone vent until he reached the area of the floor that was not wet with mud. Then he turned and watched. The grumble had become a faraway roar. The roar became a deep howl that swelled up into the room like an express train coming out of a tunnel. Then there was a mighty explosion and a solid jet of gray mud shot like a gleaming gray piston out of the hole Bond had just left, and exactly penetrated the wide aperture in the ceiling. The jet continued, absolutely solid, for perhaps half a second, and searing heat filled the room so that Bond had to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Then the gray pillar collapsed back into the hole and mud pattered onto the roof of the place and splashed down into the room in great steaming gobbets. A deep bubbling and burping came up the pipe and the room steamed. The stench of sulphur was sickening. In the total silence that followed, the tick of the clock to 11:16 was as loud as a gong stroke.

Bond turned and faced the couple under the clock. He said cheerfully, "Well, Blofeld, you mad bastard. I'll admit that your effects man down below knows his stuff. Now bring on the twelve she-devils and if they're all as beautiful as Fräulein Bunt, we'll get Noel Coward to put it to music and have it on Broadway by Christmas. How about it?"

Blofeld turned to Irma Bunt. "My dear girl, you were right! It is indeed the same Britischer. Remind me to buy you another string of the excellent Mister Mikimoto's gray pearls. And now let us be finished with this man once and for all. It is beyond our bedtime."

"Yes indeed, lieber Ernst. But first he must speak."

"Of course, Irmchen. But that can be quickly done. We have already broken his first reserves. The second line of defense will be routine. Come!"

Back up the stone passage! Back into the library! Irma Bunt back to her petit point, Blofeld back to his stance by the mantelpiece, his hand resting lightly on the boss of his great sword. It was just as if they had returned after taking part in some gracious after-dinner entertainment: a game of billiards, a look at the stamp albums, a dull quarter of an hour with the home movies. Bond decided: To hell with the Fukuoka miner! There was a writing desk next to the book-shelves. He pulled out its chair and sat down. There were cigarettes and matches. He lit up and sat back, inhaling luxuriously. Might as well make oneself comfortable before one went for The Big Sleep! He tapped his ash onto the carpet and crossed one knee over the other.

Blofeld pointed to the pile of Bond's possessions on the floor. "Kono, take those away. I will examine them later. And you can wait with the guards in the outer hall. Prepare the blowlamp and the electrical machine for further examination in case it should be necessary." He turned to Bond. "And now--talk and you will receive an honorable and quick death by the sword. Have no misgivings. I am expert with it and it is razor sharp. If you do not talk, you will die slowly and horribly and you will talk just the same. You know from your profession that this is so. There is a degree of prolonged suffering that no human can withstand. Well?"

Bond said easily, "Blofeld, you were never stupid. Many people in London and Tokyo know of my presence here tonight. At this moment, you might argue your way out of a capital charge. You have a lot of money and you could engage the best lawyers. But, if you kill me, you will certainly die."

"Mister Bond, you are not telling the truth. I know the ways of officialdom as well as you do. Therefore I dismiss your story in its entirety and without hesitation. If my presence here was officially known, a small army of policemen would have been sent to arrest me. And they would have been accompanied by a senior member of the CIA on whose 'Wanted' list I certainly feature. This is an American sphere of influence. You might have been allowed to interview me subsequent to my arrest, but an Englishman would not have featured in the initial police action."

"Who said this was police action? When, in England, I heard rumors about this place, I thought the whole project smelled of you. I obtained permission to come and have a look. But my whereabouts is known and retribution will result if I do not return."

"That does not follow, Mister Bond. There will be no trace of your ever having seen me, no trace of your entry into the property. I happen to have certain information that fits in with your presence here. One of my agents recently reported that the head of the Japanese Secret Service, the Kõan-Chõsa-Kyõku, a certain Tanaka, came down in this direction accompanied by a foreigner dressed as a Japanese. I now see that your appearance tallies with my agent's description."

"Where is this man? I would like to question him."

"He is not available."

"Very convenient."

A red fire began to burn deep in the black pools of Blofeld's eyes. "You forget that it is not I who am being interrogated, Mister Bond. It is you. Now, I happen to know all about this Tanaka. He is a totally ruthless man, and I will hazard a guess that fits the facts and that is made almost into a certitude by your crude evasions. This man Tanaka has already lost one senior agent whom he sent down here to investigate me. You were available, on some business concerned with your profession perhaps, and, for a consideration, or in exchange for a favor, you agreed to come here and kill me, thus tidying up a situation which is causing some embarrassment to the Japanese government. I do not know or care when you learned that Doctor Guntram Shatterhand was, in fact, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. You have your private reasons for wanting to kill me, and I have absolutely no doubt that you kept your knowledge to yourself and passed it on to no one for fear that the official action I have described would take the place of your private plans for revenge." Blofeld paused. He said softly, "I have one of the greatest brains in the world, Mister Bond. Have you anything to say in reply? As the Americans say, 'It had better be good.'"

Bond took another cigarette and lit it. He said composedly, "I stick to the truth, Blofeld. If anything happens to me, you, and probably the woman as an accessory, will be dead by Christmas."

"All right, Mister Bond. But I am so sure of my facts that I am now going to kill you with my own hands and dispose of your body without more ado. On reflection, I would rather do it myself than have it done slowly by the guards. You have been a thorn in my flesh for too long. The account I have to settle with you is a personal one. Have you ever heard the Japanese expression 'kirisute gomen'?"

Bond groaned. "Spare me the Lafcadio Hearnia, Blofeld!"

"It dates from the time of the samurai. It means literally 'killing and going away.' If a low person hindered the samurai's passage along the road or failed to show him proper respect, the samurai was within his rights to lop off the man's head. I regard myself as a latter-day samurai. My fine sword has not yet been blooded. Yours will be an admirable head to cut its teeth on." He turned to Irma Bunt. "You agree, mein Liebchen?"

The square wardress face looked up from its petit point. "But of course, lieber Ernst. What you decide is always correct. But be careful. This animal is dangerous."

"You forget, mein Liebchen. Since last January he has ceased to be an animal. By a simple stroke of surgery on the woman he loved, I reduced him to human dimensions."

The dominant, horrific figure stood away from the mantelpiece and took up his sword.

"Let me show you."

• • •

Bond dropped his lighted cigarette and left it to smolder on the carpet. His whole body tensed. He said, "I suppose you know you're both mad as hatters."

"So was Frederick the Great, so was Nietzsche, so was Van Gogh. We are in good, in illustrious company, Mister Bond. On the other hand, what are you? You are a common thug, a blunt instrument wielded by dolts in high places. Having done what you are told to do, out of some mistaken idea of duty or patriotism, you satisfy your brutish instincts with alcohol, nicotine and sex while waiting to be dispatched on the next misbegotten foray. Twice before, your Chief has sent you to do battle with me, Mister Bond, and, by a combination of luck and brute force, you were successful in destroying two projects of my genius. You and your government would categorize these projects as crimes against humanity, and various authorities still seek to bring me to book for them. But try and summon such wits as you possess, Mister Bond, and see them in a realistic light and in the higher realm of my own thinking."

Blofeld was a big man, perhaps six foot three, and powerfully built. He placed the tip of the samurai sword, which has almost the blade of the scimitar, between his straddled feet, and rested his sinewy hands on its boss. Looking up at him from across the room, Bond had to admit that there was something larger than life in the looming, imperious figure, in the hypnotically direct stare of the eyes, in the tall white brow, in the cruel downward twist of the thin lips. The square-cut, heavily draped kimono, designed to give the illusion of bulk to a race of smallish men, made something huge out of the towering figure, and the golden dragon embroidery, so easily to be derided as a childish fantasy, crawled menacingly across the black silk and seemed to spit real fire from over the left breast. Blofeld had paused in his harangue. Waiting for him to continue, Bond took the measure of his enemy. He knew what would be coming--justification. It was always so. When they thought they had got you where they wanted you, when they knew they were decisively on top, before the knockout, even to an audience on the threshold of extinction, it was pleasant, reassuring to the executioner, to deliver his apologia--purge the sin he was about to commit. Blofeld, his hands relaxed on the boss of his sword, continued. The tone of his voice was reasonable, self-assured, quietly expository.

He said, "Now, Mister Bond, take Operation Thunderball, as your government dubbed it. This project involved the holding for ransom of the Western world by the acquisition by me of two atomic weapons. Where lies the crime in this, except in the Erewhon of international politics? Rich boys are playing with rich toys. A poor boy comes along and takes them and offers them back for money. If the poor boy had been successful, what a valuable by-product might have resulted for the whole world. These were dangerous toys which, in the poor boy's hands, or let us say, to discard the allegory, in the hands of a Castro, could lead to the wanton extinction of mankind. By my action, I gave a dramatic example for all to see. If I had been successful and the money had been handed over, might not the threat of a recurrence of my attempt have led to serious disarmament talks, to an abandonment of these dangerous toys that might so easily get into the wrong hands? You follow my reasoning? Then this recent matter of the bacteriological-warfare attack on England. My dear Mister Bond, England is a sick nation by any standards. By hastening the sickness to the brink of death, might Britain not have been forced out of her lethargy into the kind of community effort we witnessed during the war? Cruel to be kind, Mister Bond. Where lies the great crime there? And now this matter of my so-called 'Castle of Death.' " Blofeld paused and his eyes took on an inward look. He said, "I will make a confession to you, Mister Bond. I have come to suffer from a certain lassitude of mind which I am determined to combat. This comes in part from being a unique genius who is alone in the world, without honor--worse, misunderstood. No doubt much of the root cause of this accidie is physical--liver, kidneys, heart, the usual weak points of the middle-aged. But there has developed in me a certain mental lameness, a disinterest in humanity and its future, an utter boredom with the affairs of mankind. So, not unlike the gourmet, with his jaded palate, I now seek only the highly spiced, the sharp impact on the taste buds, mental as well as physical, the tickle that is truly exquisite. And so, Mister Bond, I came to devise this useful and essentially humane project--the offer of free death to those who seek release from the burden of being alive. By doing so, I have not only provided the common man with a solution to the problem of whether to be or not to be, I have also provided the Japanese government, though for the present they appear to be blind to my magnanimity, with a tidy, out-of-the-way charnel house which relieves them of a constant flow of messy occurrences involving the trains, the trams, the volcanoes and other unattractively public means of killing yourself. You must admit that, far from being a crime, this is a public service unique in the history of the world."

"I saw one man being disgustingly murdered yesterday."

"Tidying up, Mister Bond. Tidying up. The man came here wishing to die. What you saw done was only helping a weak man to his seat on the boat across the Styx. But I can see that we have no contact. I cannot reach what serves you for a mind. For your part, you cannot see further than the simple gratification of your last cigarette. So enough of this idle chatter. You have already kept us from our beds far too long. Do you want to be hacked about in a vulgar brawl, or will you offer your neck in the honorable fashion?" Blofeld took a step forward and raised his mighty sword in both hands and held it above his head. The light from the oil lamps shimmered on the blade and showed up the golden filigree engraving.

Bond knew what to do. He had known as soon as he had been led back into the room and had seen the wounded guard's stave still standing in the shadowed' angle of the wall. But there was a bell push near the woman. She would have to be dealt with first! Bond hurled himself to the left, seized the stave and leaped at the woman whose hand was already reaching upward.

The stave thudded into the side of her head and she sprawled grotesquely forward off her chair and lay still. Blofeld's sword whistled down, inches from his shoulder. Bond twisted and lunged to his full extent, thrusting his stave forward in the groove of his left hand almost as if it had been a billiard cue. The tip caught Blofeld hard on the breastbone and flung him against the wall, but he hurtled back and came inexorably forward, swishing his sword like a scythe. Bond aimed at his right arm, missed and had to retreat. He was concentrating on keeping his weapon as well as his body away from the whirling steel, or his stave would be cut like a matchstick, and its extra length was his only hope of victory. Blofeld suddenly lunged, expertly, his right knee bent forward. Bond feinted to the left, but he was inches too slow and the tip of the sword flicked his left ribs, drawing blood. But before Blofeld could withdraw, Bond had slashed two-handed, sideways, at his legs. His stave met bone. Blofeld cursed, and made an ineffectual stab at Bond's weapon. Then he advanced again and Bond could only dodge and feint in the middle of the room and make quick short lunges to keep the enemy at bay. But he was losing ground in front of the whirling steel, and now Blofeld, scenting victory, took lightning steps and thrust forward like a snake. Bond leaped sideways, saw his chance and gave a mighty sweep of his stave. It caught Blofeld on his right shoulder and drew a curse from him. His main sword arm! Bond pressed forward, lancing again and again with his weapon and scoring several hits to the body, but one of Blofeld's parries caught the stave and cut off that one vital foot of extra length as if it had been a candle end. Blofeld saw his advantage and began attacking, making furious forward jabs that Bond could only parry by hitting attacking, making furious forward jabs that Bond could only parry by hitting the flat of the sword to deflect it. But now the stave was slippery in the sweat of his hands and for the first time he felt the cold breath of defeat at his neck. And Blofeld seemed to smell it, for he suddenly executed one of his fast running lunges to get under Bond's guard. Bond guessed the distance of the wall behind him and leaped backward against it. Even so, he felt the sword point fan across his stomach. But, hurled back by his impact with the wall, he counterlunged, swept the sword aside with his stave and, dropping his weapon, made a dive for Blofeld's neck and got both hands to it. For a moment the two sweating faces were almost up against each other. The boss of Blofeld's sword battered into Bond's side. Bond hardly felt the crashing blows. He pressed with his thumbs, and pressed and pressed and heard the sword clang to the floor and felt Blofeld's fingers and nails tearing at his face, trying to reach his eyes. Bond whispered through his gritted teeth, "Die, Blofeld! Die!" And suddenly the tongue was out and the eyes rolled upward and the body slipped down to the ground. But Bond followed it and knelt, his hands cramped round the powerful neck, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, in the terrible grip of blood lust.

Bond slowly came to himself. The golden dragon's head on the black silk kimono spat flame at him. He unclasped his aching hands from round the neck and, not looking again at the purple face, got to his feet. He staggered. God, how his head hurt! What remained to be done? He tried to cast his mind back. He had had a clever idea. What was it? Oh yes, of course! He picked up Blofeld's sword and sleepwalked down the stone passage to the torture room. He glanced up at the clock. Five minutes to midnight. And there was the wooden box, mud-spattered, down beside the throne on which he had sat, days, years before. He went to it and hacked it open with one stroke of the sword. Yes, there was the big wheel he had expected! He knelt down and twisted and twisted until it was finally closed. What would happen now? The end of the world? Bond ran back up the passage. Now he must get out, get away from this place! But his line of retreat was closed by the guards! He tore aside a curtain and smashed the window open with his sword. Outside there was a balustraded terrace that seemed to run round this story of the castle. Bond looked around for something to cover his nakedness. There was only Blofeld's sumptuous kimono. Coldly, Bond tore it off the corpse, put it on and tied the sash. The interior of the kimono was cold, like a snake's skin. He looked down at Irma Bunt. She was breathing heavily with a drunken snore. Bond went to the window and climbed out, minding his bare feet among the glass splinters.

But he had been wrong! The balustrade was a brief one, closed at both ends. He stumbled from end to end of it, but there was no exit. He looked over the side. A sheer 100-foot drop to the gravel. A soft fluted whistle above him caught his ear. He looked up. Only a breath of wind in the moorings of that bloody balloon! But then a lunatic idea came to him, a flash back to one of the old Douglas Fairbanks films when the hero had swung across a wide hall by taking a flying leap at the chandelier. This helium balloon was strong enough to hold taut 50 feet of framed cotton strip bearing the warning sign! Why shouldn't it be powerful enough to bear the weight of a man?

Bond ran to the corner of the balustrade to which the mooring line was attached. He tested it. It was taut as a wire! From somewhere behind him there came a great clamor in the castle. Had the woman awakened? Holding onto the straining rope, he climbed onto the railing, cut a foothold for himself in the cotton banner and, grasping the mooring rope with his right hand, chopped downward below him with Blofeld's sword and threw himself into space.

It worked! There was a light night breeze and he felt himself waited gently away over the moonlit park, over the glittering, steaming lake, toward the sea. But he was rising, not falling! The helium sphere was not in the least worried by his weight! Then blue-and-yellow fire fluttered from the upper story of the castle and an occasional angry wasp zipped past him. Bond's hands and feet were beginning to ache with the strain of holding on. Something hit him on the side of the head, the same side that was already sending out its throbbing message of pain. And that finished him. He knew it had! For now the whole black silhouette of the castle swayed in the moonlight and seemed to jig upward and sideways and then slowly dissolve like an ice-cream cone in sunshine. The top story crumbled first, then the next, and the next, and then, after a moment, a huge jet of orange fire shot up from hell toward the moon and a buffet of hot wind, followed by an echoing crack of thunder, hit Bond and made his balloon sway violently.

What was it all about? Bond didn't know or care. The pain in his head was his whole universe. Punctured by a bullet, the balloon was fast losing height. Below, the softly swelling sea offered a bed. Bond let go with hands and feet and plummeted down toward peace, toward the rippling feathers of some childhood dream of softness and escape from pain.

• • •

An item from the obituary column of The Times of London:

M writes:

As your readers will have learned from earlier issues, a senior officer of the Ministry of Defense, Commander James Bond, C.M.G., R.N.V.R., is missing, believed killed, while on an official mission to Japan. It grieves me to have to report that hopes of his survival must now be abandoned. It therefore falls to my lot, as the head of the department he served so well, to give some account of this officer and of his outstanding services to his country.

James Bond was born of a Scottish father, Andrew Bond of Glencoe, and a Swiss mother, Monique Delacroix, from the Canton de Vaud. His father being a foreign representative of the Vickers armaments firm, his early education, from which he inherited a first-class command of French and German, was entirely abroad. When he was 11 years of age, both his parents were killed in a climbing accident in the Aiguilles Rouges above Chamonix, and the youth came under the guardianship of an aunt, since deceased, Miss Charmian Bond, and he went to live with her at the quaintly named hamlet of Pett Bottom near Canterbury in Kent. There, in a small cottage hard by the attractive Duck Inn, his aunt, who must have been a most erudite and accomplished lady, completed his education for an English public school and, at the age of 12 or there-abouts, he passed satisfactorily into Eton, for which college he had been entered at birth by his father. It must be admitted that his career at Eton was brief and undistinguished and, after only two halves, as a result, it pains me to record, of some alleged trouble with one of the boys' maids, his aunt was requested to remove him. She managed to obtain his transfer to Fettes, his father's old school. Here the atmosphere was somewhat Calvinistic, and both academic and athletic standards were rigorous. Nevertheless, though inclined to be solitary by nature, he established some firm friendships among the traditionally famous athletic circles at the school. By the time he left, at the early age of 17, he had twice fought for the school as a lightweight and had, in addition, founded the first serious judo class at an English public school. By now it was 1941 and, by claiming an age of 19, and with the help of an old Vickers colleague of his father, he entered a branch of what was subsequently to become the Ministry of Defense. To serve the confidential nature of his duties, he was accorded the rank of lieutenant in the Special Branch of the R.N.V.R., and it is a measure of the satisfaction his services gave to his superiors that he ended the war with the rank of commander. It was about this time that the writer became associated with certain aspects of the ministry's work, and it was with much gratification that I accepted Commander Bond's postwar application to continue working for the ministry in which, at the time of his lamented disappearance, he had risen to the rank of Principal Officer in the Civil Service.

The nature of Commander Bond's duties with the ministry, which were, incidentally, recognized by the appointment of C.M.G. in 1954, must remain confidential, nay, secret, but his colleagues at the ministry will allow that he performed them with outstanding bravery and distinction, although occasionally, through an impetuous strain in his nature, with a streak of the foolhardy that brought him in conflict with higher authority. But he possessed what almost amounted to "The Nelson Touch" in moments of the highest emergency, and he somehow contrived to escape more or less unscathed from the many adventurous paths down which his duties led him. The inevitable publicity, particularly in the foreign press, accorded some of these adventures, made him, much against his will, something of a public figure, with the inevitable result that a series of popular books came to be written around him by a personal friend and former colleague of James Bond. If the quality of these books, or their degree of veracity, had been any higher, the author would certainly have been prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act. It is a measure of the disdain in which these fictions are held at the ministry, that action has not yet--I emphasize the qualification--been taken against the author and publisher of these high-flown and romanticized caricatures of episodes in the career of an outstanding public servant.

It only remains to conclude this brief in memoriam by assuring his friends that Commander Bond's last mission was one of supreme importance to the state. Although it now appears that, alas, he will not return from it, I have the authority of the highest quarters in the land to confirm that the mission proved 100 percent successful. It is no exaggeration to pronounce unequivocally that, through the recent valorous efforts of this one man, the safety of the realm had received mighty reassurance.

James Bond was married in 1962, to Teresa, only daughter of Marc-Ange Draco, of Marseilles. The marriage ended in tragic circumstances that were reported in the press at the time. There was no issue of the marriage and James Bond leaves, so far as I am aware, no relative living.

M.G. writes:

I was happy and proud to serve Commander Bond in a close capacity during the past three years at the Ministry of Defense. If, indeed, our fears for him are justified, may I suggest these simple words for his epitaph? Many of the junior staff here feel they represent his philosophy: "I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."

• • •

When Kissy saw the figure, black-winged in its kimono, crash down into the sea, she sensed that it was her man, and she covered the 200 yards from the base of the wall as fast as she had ever swum in her life. The tremendous impact with the water had at first knocked all the wind out of Bond, but the will to live, so nearly extinguished by the searing pain in his head, was revived by the new but recognizable enemy of the sea and, when Kissy got to him, he was struggling to free himself from the kimono.

At first he thought she was Blofeld and he tried to strike out at her.

"It's Kissy," she said urgently, "Kissy Suzuki! Don't you remember?"

He didn't. He had no recollection of anything in the world but the face of his enemy and of the desperate urge to smash it. But his strength was going and finally, cursing feebly, he allowed her to manhandle him out of the kimono and paid heed to the voice that pleaded with him.

"Now follow me, Taro-san. When you get tired I will pull you with me. We are all trained in such rescue work."

But, when she started off, Bond didn't follow her. Instead he swam feebly round and round like a wounded animal, in ever-increasing circles. She almost wept. What had happened to him? What had they done to him at the Castle of Death? Finally she stopped him and talked softly to him and he docilely allowed her to put her arms under his armpits and, with his head cradled between her breasts, she set off with the traditional backward leg stroke.

It was an amazing swim for a girl--half a mile with currents to contend with and only the moon and an occasional glance over her shoulder to give her a bearing, but she achieved it and finally hauled Bond out of the water in her little cove and collapsed on the flat stones beside him.

She was awakened by a groan from Bond. He had been quietly sick and now sat with his head in his hands, looking blankly out to sea with the glazed eyes of a sleepwalker. When Kissy put an arm round his shoulders, he turned vaguely toward her. "Who are you? How did I get here? What is this place?" He examined her more carefully. "You're very pretty."

Kissy looked at him keenly. She said, and a sudden plan of great glory blazed across her mind, "You cannot remember anything? You do not remember who you are and where you came from?"

Bond passed a hand across his forehead, squeezed his eyes. "Nothing," he said wearily. "Nothing except a man's face. I think he was dead. I think he was a bad man. What is your name? You must tell me everything."

"My name is Kissy Suzuki and you are my lover. Your name is Taro Todoroki. We live on this island and go fishing together. It is a very good life. But can you walk a little? I must take you to where you live and get you some food and a doctor to see you. You have a terrible wound on the side of your head and there is a cut on your ribs. You must have fallen while you were climbing the cliffs after sea gulls' eggs." She stood up and held out her hands.

Bond took them and staggered to his feet. She held him by the hand and gently guided him along the path toward the Suzuki house. But she passed it and went on and up to the grove of dwarf maples and camellia bushes. She led him behind the Shinto shrine and into the cave. It was large and the earth floor was dry. She said, "This is where you live. I live here with you. I had put away our bed things. I will go and fetch them and some food. Now lie down, my beloved, and rest and I will look after you. You are ill, but the doctor will make you well again."

Bond did as he was told and was instantly asleep, the pain-free side of his head cradled on his arm.

Kissy ran off down the mountain, her heart singing. There was much to be done, much to be arranged, but now that she had her man back she was desperately determined to keep him.

It was almost dawn and her parents were awake. She whispered to them excitedly as she went about warming some milk and putting together a bundle of futon, her father's best kimono and a selection of Bond's washing things--nothing to remind him of his past. Her parents were used to her whims and her independence. Her father merely commented mildly that it would be all right if the kannushi-san gave his blessing, then, having washed the salt off herself and dressed in her own simple brown kimono, she scampered off up the hill to the cave.

Later, the Shinto priest received her gravely. He almost seemed to be expecting her. He held up his hand and spoke to the kneeling figure. "Kissy-chan, I know what I know. The spawn of the Devil is dead. So is his wife. The Castle of Death has been totally destroyed. These things were brought about as the Six Guardians foretold, by the man from across the sea. Where is he now?"

"In the cave behind the shrine, kannushi-san. He is gravely wounded. I love him. I wish to keep him and care for him. He remembers nothing of the past. I wish it to remain so, so that we may marry and he may become a son of Kuro for all time."

"That will not be possible, my daughter. In due course he will recover and go off across the world to where he came from. And there will be official inquiries for him from Fukuoka, perhaps even from Tokyo, for he is surely a man of renown in his own country."

"But kannushi-san, if you so instruct the elders of Kuro, they will show these people shiran-kao, they will say they know nothing, that this man Todoroki left, swimming for the mainland, and has not been heard of since. Then the people will go away. All I want to do is to care for him and keep him for myself as long as I can. If the day comes when he wishes to leave, I will not hinder him. I will help him. He was happy here fishing with me and my David-bird. He told me so. When he recovers, I will see that he continues to be happy. Should not Kuro cherish and honor this hero who was brought to us by the gods? Would not the Six Guardians wish to keep him for a while? And have I not earned some small token for my humble efforts to help Todoroki-san and save his life?"

The priest sat silent for a while with his eyes closed. Then he looked down at the pleading face at his feet. He smiled. "I will do what is possible, Kissychan. And now bring the doctor to me and then take him up to the cave so that he can tend this man's wounds. Then I will speak to the elders. But for many weeks you must be very discreet and the gaijin must not show himself. When all is quiet again, he may move back into the house of your parents and allow himself to be seen."

The doctor knelt beside Bond in the cave and spread out on the ground a large map of the human head with the sections marked with figures and ideograms. His gentle fingers probed Bond's wound for signs of fracture, while Kissy knelt beside him and held one of Bond's sweating hands in both of hers. The doctor bent forward and, lifting the eyelids one by one, gazed deeply into the glazed eyes through a large reading glass. On his instructions, Kissy ran for boiling water, and the doctor proceeded to clean the cut made by the bullet across the terrible swelling of the first wound caused by Bond's crash into the oubliette. Then he tapped sulpha dust into the wound and bound up the head neatly and expertly, put surgical plaster over the cut across the ribs and stood up and took Kissy outside the cave. "He will live," he said, "but it may be months, even years before he regains his memory. It is particularly the temporal lobe of his brain, where the memory is stored, that has been damaged. For this, much education will be necessary. You will endeavor all the time to remind him about past things and places. Then isolated facts that he will recognize will turn into chains of association. He should undoubtedly be taken to Fukuoka for an X ray, but I think there is no fracture and in any case the kannushi-san has ordained that he is to remain under your care and his presence on the island be kept secret. I shall of course observe the instructions of the honorable kannushi-san and only visit him by different routes and at night. But there is much you will have to attend to, for he must not be moved in any way for at least a week. Now listen carefully," said the doctor, and he gave her minute instructions which covered every aspect of feeding and nursing and left her to carry them out.

And so the days ran into weeks and the police came again and again from Fukuoka, and the official called Tanaka came from Tokyo and later a huge man who said he was from Australia arrived and he was the most difficult of all for Kissy to shake off. But the face of shiran-kao remained of stone and the island of Kuro kept its secret. James Bond's body gradually mended and Kissy took him out for walks at night. They also went for an occasional swim in the cove, where they played with David and she told him all the history of the Ama and of Kuro and expertly parried all his questions about the world outside the island.

Winter came, and the Ama had to stay ashore and turn their hands to mending nets and boats and working on the small holdings on the mountainside, and Bond came back into the house and made himself useful with carpentry and odd jobs and with learning Japanese from Kissy. The glazed look went from his eyes, but they remained remote and faraway and every night he was puzzled by dreams of a quite different world of white people and big cities and half-remembered faces. But Kissy assured him that these were just nightmares such as she had, and that they had no meaning, and gradually Bond came to accept the little stone-and-wood house and the endless horizon of sea as his finite world. Kissy was careful to keep him away from the south coast of the island, and dreaded the day when fishing would begin again at the end of May and he would see the great black wall across the straits and memory might come flooding back.

The doctor was surprised by Bond's lack of progress and resigned himself to the conclusion that Bond's amnesia was total. But soon there was no cause for further visits because Bond's physical health and his apparently complete satisfaction with his lot showed that in every other respect he was totally recovered.

But there was one thing that greatly distressed Kissy. From the first night in the cave she had shared Bond's futon and, when he was well and back in the house, she waited every night for him to make love to her. But, while he kissed her occasionally and often held her hand, his body seemed totally unaware of her however much she pressed herself against him and even caressed him with her hands. Had the wound made him impotent? She consulted the doctor, but he said there could be no connection, although it was just possible that he had forgotten how to perform the act of love.

So one day Kissy Suzuki announced that she was going to take the weekly mail boat to Fukuoka to do some shopping and, in the big city, she found her way to the local sex shop, called The Happy Shop, that is a feature of all self-respecting Japanese towns, and told her problem to the wicked-looking old gray-beard behind the innocent counter containing nothing more viciously alluring than tonics and contraceptives. He asked her if she possessed 5000 yen, which is a lot of money, and when she said she did, he locked the street door and invited her to the back of the shop.

The sex merchant bent down and pulled out from beneath a bench what looked like a small wire rabbit hutch. He put this on the bench and Kissy saw that it contained four large toads on a bed of moss. Next he produced a metal contraption that had the appearance of a hot plate with a small wire cage in the middle. He carefully lifted out one of the toads and placed it inside the cage so that it squatted on the metal surface. Then he hauled a large car battery onto the bench, put it alongside the "hot plate," and attached wires from one to the other. Then he spoke encouraging endearments to the toad and stood back.

The toad began to shiver slightly, and the crosses in its dark-red eyes blazed angrily at Kissy as if he knew it was all her fault. The sex merchant, his head bent over the little cage, watched anxiously and then rubbed his hands with satisfaction as heavy beads of sweat broke out all over the toad's warty skin. He reached for an iron teaspoon and a small phial, gently raised the wire cage and very carefully scraped the sweat beads off the toad's body and dripped the result into the phial. When he had finished, the phial contained about half a teaspoon of clear liquid. He corked it up and handed it to Kissy, who held it with reverence and great care as if it had been a fabulous jewel. Then the sex merchant disconnected the wires and put the toad, which seemed none the worse for its experience, back into its hutch and closed the top.

He turned to Kissy and bowed. "When this valuable product is desired by a sincere customer I always ask them to witness the process of distillation. Otherwise they might harbor the unworthy thought that the phial contained only water from the tap. But you have now seen that this preparation is the authentic sweat of a toad. It is produced by giving the toad a mild electric shock. The toad suffered only temporary discomfort and it will be rewarded this evening with an extra portion of flies or crickets. And now," he went to a cupboard and took out a small pillbox, "here is powder of dried lizard. A combination of the two, inserted in your lover's food at the evening meal, should prove infallible. However, to excite his mind as well as his senses, for an extra thousand yen I can provide you with a most excellent pillow book."

"What is a pillow book?"

The sex merchant went back to his cupboard and produced a cheaply bound and printed paper book with a plain cover. Kissy opened it. Her hand went to her mouth and she blushed furiously. But then, being a careful girl who didn't want to be cheated, she turned some more of the pages. They all contained outrageously pornographic close-up pictures, most faithfully engraved, of the love act portrayed from every possible aspect. "Very well," she whispered. She handed back the book. "Please wrap up everything carefully." She took out her purse and began counting out the notes.

Out in the shop, the wicked-faced old man handed her the parcel and, bowing deeply, unlocked the door. Kissy gave a perfunctory bob in return and darted out of the shop down the street as if she had just made a pact with the Devil. But by the time she went to catch the mail boat back to Kuro, she was hugging herself with excitement and pleasure and making up a story to explain away her acquisition of the book.

Bond was waiting for her on the jetty. It was the first day she had been away from him and he had missed her painfully. They talked happily as they walked hand in hand along the foreshore among the nets and boats, and the people smiled to see them, but looked through them instead of greeting them, for had not the priest decreed that their gaijin hero did not officially exist? And the priest's edict was final.

Back at the house, Kissy went happily about preparing a highly spiced dish of sukiyaki, the national dish of beef stew. This was not only a treat, for they seldom ate meat, but Kissy didn't know if her love potions had any taste and it would be wise not to take any chances. When it was ready, with a trembling hand, she poured the brown powder and the liquid into Bond's portion and stirred it well. Then she brought the dishes in to where the family awaited, squatting on the tatami before the low table.

She watched surreptitiously as Bond devoured every scrap of his portion and wiped his plate clean with a pinch of rice and then, after warm compliments on her cooking, drank his tea and retired to their room. In the evenings, he usually sat mending nets or fishing lines before going to bed. As she helped her mother wash up, she wondered if he were doing so now!

Kissy spent a long time doing her hair and making herself pretty before, her heart beating like a captured bird, she joined him.

He looked up from the pillow book and laughed. "Kissy, where in God's name did you get this?"

She giggled. "Oh that! I forgot to tell you. Some dreadful man tried to make up to me in one of the shops. He pressed that into my hand and made an assignation for this evening. I agreed just to get rid of him. It is what we call a pillow book. Lovers use them. Aren't the pictures exciting?"

Bond threw off his kimono. He pointed to the soft futon on the floor. He said fiercely, "Kissy, take off your clothes and lie down there. We'll start at page one."

• • •

Winter slid into spring and fishing began again, but now Kissy dived naked like the other girls and Bond and the bird dived with her and there were good days and bad days. But the sun shone steadily and the sea was blue and wild irises covered the mountainside and everyone made a great fuss as the sprinkling of cherry trees burst into bloom, and Kissy wondered what moment to choose to tell Bond that she was going to have a baby and whether he would then propose marriage to her.

But one day, on the way down to the cove, Bond looked preoccupied and, when he asked her to wait before they put the boat out as he had something serious to talk to her about, her heart leaped and she sat down beside him on a flat rock and put her arms round him and waited.

Bond took a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and held it out to her, and she shivered with fear and knew what was coming. She took her arms from round him and looked at the paper. It was one of the rough squares of newspaper from the spike in the little lavatory. She always tore these squares herself and discarded any that contained words in English--just in case.

Bond pointed. "Kissy, what is this word 'Vladivostok'? What does it mean? It has some kind of a message for me. I connect it with a very big country. I believe the country is called Russia. Am I right?"

Kissy remembered her promise to the priest. She put her face in her hands. "Yes, Taro-san. That is so."

Bond pressed his fists to his eyes and squeezed. "I have a feeling that I have had much to do with this Russia, that a lot of my past life was concerned with it. Could that be possible? I long so terribly to know where I came from before I came to Kuro. Will you help me, Kissy?"

Kissy took her hands from her face and looked at him. She said quietly, "Yes, I will help you, my beloved."

"Then I must go to this place Vladivostok, and perhaps it will awaken more memories and I can work my way back from there."

"If you say so, my love. The mail boat goes to Fukuoka tomorrow. I will put you on a train there and give you money and full directions. It is advertised that one can go from the northern island, Hokkaido, to Sakhalin, which is on the Russian mainland. Then you can no doubt make your way to Vladivostok. It is a great port to the south of Sakhalin. But you must take care, for the Russians are not friendly people."

"Surely they would do no harm to a fisherman from Kuro?"

Kissy's heart choked her. She got up and walked slowly down to the boat. She pushed the boat down the pebbles into the water and waited, at her usual place in the stern, for him to get in and for his knees to clasp hers as they always did.

James Bond took his place and unshipped the oars, and the cormorant scrambled on board and perched imperiously in the bow. Bond measured where the rest of the fleet lay on the horizon, and began to row.

Kissy smiled into his eyes and the sun shone on his back and, so far as James Bond was concerned, it was a beautiful day just like all the other days had been--without a cloud in the sky.

But then, of course, he didn't know that his name was James Bond. And, compared with the blazing significance to him of that single Russian word on the scrap of paper, his life on Kuro, his love for Kissy Suzuki, were, in Tiger's phrase, of as little account as sparrows' tears.

Synopsis: To the inscrutable M, chief of Her Majesty's Secret Service, it seemed obvious that Secret Agent 007, James Bond, had been going downhill fast--ever since the murder of his wife by Ernst Stavro Blofeld, mastermind of the international crime syndicate spectre, and by Blofeld's mistress, the repugnant Irma Bunt. Yet, M reasoned. Bond deserved a final chance. And thus he was given an assignment in which his opportunities of success were rated as no better than ten thousand to one: He was to obtain for Britain the secrets of Magic 44 a Japanese calculator with the gift of decoding U. S. S. R. dispatches. Sent to Tokyo, Bond was told by Tiger Tanaka, chief of the Japanese Secret Service, that, indeed, he might share the locked secrets of Magic 44 in return for one favor performed for Japan: He must destroy the malignant Doctor Guntram Shatterhand, mysterious owner of an exotic park on the island of Kyushu, a garden of death where suicide-bent Japanese destroyed themselves with poisoned vegetation, snakes and spiders--or by heaving themselves into a lake stocked by Shatterhand with killer piranhas.

Reluctantly Bond agreed to this mission--and submitted to a complete transformation of appearance at the instruction of Tanaka. Gradually the facade of James Bond became, to the naked eye at least, that of Taro Todoroki, a deaf-and-dumb coal miner from Fukuoka. His skin was dyed a light brown, his hair oiled and cut into Japanese bangs, his eyebrows shaved to slant upward, and he was trained to behave as a mute peasant. At a final briefing, he was shown pictures of Shatterhand and his wife, whom he recognized immediately as Blofeld and Irma Bunt. Now a final motive for Bond had been established: revenge.

The launching pad for Bond's invasion of Blofeld's Castle of Death had been established on Kuro island, where he joined the family of Kissy Suzuki, a fisherman's exotic daughter who dived for awabi shells in the straits. At length, finding Bond not only enigmatic, but also highly irresistible, Kissy agreed to swim with him to Blofeld's island and then to wait for him on Kuro until his bloody mission had been accomplished.

Together they reached the grim redoubt of the master criminal and, as Kissy swam homeward, Bond hauled himself ashore, hid in a gardener's hut and later observed the suicides of several Japanese. Then, turning his back on these horrors, he pulled a few sacks over his chilled frame for cover and fell into a shallow sleep, full of ghosts and demons and screams.

This is the final installment of a three-part serialization of Ian Fleming's latest James Bond novel, "You Only Live Twice."